Inside Cannes Lions 2026: Brands and Experiential's Moment
What I Learned at Cannes Lions 2026 [00:00:00] Welcome back to Creating the Perfect Experience. I'm your host, Mark Testa, founder and creative director of Mark Steven Agency, and today there's no guest, just me. I wanna talk about Cannes, Cannes Lions, that I went to for the first time this year. And I wanna talk about what I actually saw, not the highlight reels or the TikTok, but the version that I witnessed as an observer.It's a place to learn and be inspired and connect, but it was a bit overwhelming. If you've ever been to Cannes Lions, the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity is one of the most recognized events in the marketing and advertising world. It draws brand marketers, agency leaders, media companies, and creators from all over the globe to the French Riviera for a week of sessions, awards, and deals.And once I got there, the hierarchy became very clear to me and very fast. Brands are at the top, and the festival and the sponsors seem to [00:01:00] orbit around them. The conversations revolve around them. The beach activations, the yachts, and the parties are built for them. So if you're a brand, Cannes can make you feel like royalty, and honestly, that makes sense.They're writing the checks. But what does that mean for everyone else? Agencies, designers, production partners. And in my opinion, you're either in service of the brand or you're looking for a seat at that table. So that was my first real lesson walking in. The second thing I noticed, and you couldn't miss it, was the amount of money that tech was spending.Google, Amazon, Spotify, and the other major platforms were everywhere. Not just sponsoring sessions, I'm talking full-scale activations, immersive environments, hospitality spaces on the beach that cost millions. And the message was loud and clear. "We want your ad dollars, and we're willing to put up a show to get them."What's [00:02:00] interesting to me as someone who lives in the experiential world is that these tech giants have fully absorbed the lesson that we've been teaching for decades, that an experience creates emotional connection that a media buy can't do alone. They're using our language and doing it to sell their platforms.It's not a criticism, it's just a reality. When the biggest spenders in the room are competing through experience, it signals something important about where the industry is headingSo another observation, and this one I wasn't fully prepared for, was just how dominant the creator economy has become.Creators, celebrities were everywhere. , Not as attendees, but as power players. Brands were actively courting them. Panels were built around them, and the conversation kept circling back to this theme: brands need creators to reach audiences, and the creators need brands to build scale.It's a [00:03:00] relationship of mutual dependency. So what I found fascinating is the line between creator and brands were being blurred. The most sophisticated creators are operating as media companies, and the many brands are trying to behave like creators with a personality, with a point of view, and with a community.And for experiential, this is actually an opportunity because when a creator or a brand wants to show up at a physical space, at a festival, a pop-up, or a cultural moment, they need our expertise. So Now let's get real for a minute. As a person walking through Cannes, not as a speaker, not as an award winner, just as a professional trying to connect and build, it can be tough to be noticed.So if you're not a creator or an, you know, the athlete or the celebrity, it is difficult. Uh, so in my opinion, there are three currencies a panel, an award, or a connection. And it doesn't just go for creative agency. I [00:04:00] think it goes for anyone else who is, who is not a, a, you know, a brand leader.Um, and without one of these currencies or awards or, or panel, um, you're networking to a sea of people who are all doing the same thing, all trying to get in front of the same decision-makers. And it's not a complaint. I just know the rules of the game, and the game is earn your visibility. You have to earn your way through there.So another observation that that I noticed many times at the festival this year was AI, and I really, you know, expected to hear that. Um, but the take on it was, uh, slightly different. Everyone agreed that AI is here, and it's a tool. However, what I kept hearing over and over from brand marketers and agency leaders and creators was that people are starving for what's real.In a world where content can be generated, where interactions can be automated, it's getting hard to tell what's human and what isn't. People are craving the [00:05:00] physical presence, eye contact, texture, spontaneity, the things that can't be faked or scaled This came up in panel after panel. The hunger for real human interaction is being driven in large part by the rise of AI, not in spite of it.And I'll be honest, sitting in the room as someone who has spent many years building live experiences, I felt something close to a vindication because that's the argument we've been trying to make experience is irreplaceable. You can't automate the feeling of being in a room with some of the...something that moves you. AI is making a case for us, and we just have to be loud enough to take credit for it. Which brings me to my next thought and why I wanted to even do this episode. Experiential work deserves to be recognized, particularly at Cannes, as a true form of marketing, not as a supporting category, not as a subcategory of something else, [00:06:00] but as a marketing discipline.There were a number of discussions and talks geared toward live marketing championed by individuals at XP Land and the head of events at Canva, which were amazing. They were designed and produced live experience that were moving people, that create memories, that build community around the brand. That is creative.That is strategic. That has measurable impact. And yet at a festival built around celebrating marketing creativity, the live experience often Thanks for tuning in. Check us out at https://www.instagram.com/markstephenagency/
